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 cross and the saints”; and by the light of this we ought perhaps to interpret section ix. of Esc. “They blaspheme the precious cross, saying that the Christ is a cross.” The Christ is an elect one, who, as the (q.v.) put it, having been consoled or become a Paraclete in the flesh, stands in prayer with his hands outspread in the form of a cross, while the congregation of hearers or audiences adore the Christ in him. The same idea that the perfect ones are christs as having received the Paraclete is met with in early Christian documents, and still survives among the Syriac-speaking shepherds on the hills north of Mardin. These have their christs, and Dr E. A. Wallis Budge, to whom the present writer owes his information, was shown the stream in which their last christ had been baptized. In modern Russia also survives a sect of Bogomils called Christowschtschina, because one member of it is adored by the rest as Christ. It was because they believed themselves to have living christs among them that the Paulicians rejected the fetish worship of a material cross, in which orthodox Armenian priests imagined they had by prayers and anointing confined the Spirit of Christ. It is also likely enough that they did not consider sensible matter to be a vehicle worthy to contain divine effluence and holy virtues, and knew that such rites were alien to early Christianity. The former scruple, however, was not confined to Paulicians, for it inspires the answer made by Eusebius, bishop of Thessalonica, to the emperor Maurice, when the latter asked to have relics sent to him of Demetrius the patron saint of that city. It runs thus: “While informing your Reverence of the faith of the Thessalonicans and of the miracles wrought among them, I must yet, in respect of this request of yours, remark that the faith of the city is not of such a kind as that the people desire to worship God and to honour his saints by means of anything sensible. For they have received the faith from the Lord’s holy testimonies, to the effect that God is a spirit, and that those who worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.” Manicheans, Bogomils, Cathars and Paulicians for like reasons denied the name of church to material constructions of wood and stone. Among the later Cathars of Europe we find the repudiation of marriage defended on the ground that the only true marriage is of Christ with his bride the Virgin church, and perhaps this is why Paulicians and Thonraki would not make of marriage a religious rite or sacrament.

Did the Paulicians, like the later Cathars (who in so much resembled them), reject water baptism? And must we so interpret clause ix. of Esc? Perhaps they merely rejected the idea that the numen or divine grace can be confined by priestly consecration in water and by mere washing be imparted to persons baptized. The Key of Truth regards the water as a washing of the body, and sees in the rite no opus operatum, but an essentially spiritual rite in which “the king releases certain rulers from the prison of sin, the Son calls them to himself and comforts them with great words, and the Holy Spirit of the king forthwith comes and crowns them, and dwells in them for ever.” For this reason the Thonraki adhere to adult baptism, which in ancient wise they confer at thirty years of age or later, and have retained in its primitive significance the rite of giving a Christian name to a child on the eighth day from birth. It is hardly likely that the Thonraki of the 10th century would have rejected water-baptism and yet have retained unction with holy oil; this Gregory Magistros attests they did, but he is an unreliable witness.

It is then on the whole probable that the Paulicians who appear in Armenian records as early as 550, and were afterwards called Thonraki, by the Greeks by the Armenian name Paulikiani, were the remains of a primitive adoptionist Christianity, widely dispersed in the east and already condemned under the name of Pauliani by the council of Nice in 325. A renegade Armenian Catholicos of the 7th century named Isaac has preserved to us a document which sums up their tenets. He adduces it as a sort of reductio ad absurdum of Christians who would model life and cult on Christ and his apostles, unencumbered by later church traditions. It runs thus: (1) Christ was thirty years old when he was baptized. Therefore they baptize no one until he is thirty years of age. (2) Christ, after baptism, was not anointed with myrrh nor with holy oil, therefore let them not be anointed with myrrh or holy oil. (3) Christ was not baptized in a font, but in a river. Therefore, let them not be baptized in a font. (4) Christ, when he was about to be baptized, did not recite the creed of the 318 fathers of Nice, therefore shall they not make profession of it. (5) Christ when about to be baptized, was not first made to turn to the west and renounce the devil and blow upon him, nor again to turn to the east and make a compact with God. For he was himself true God. So let them not impose these things on those to be baptized. (6) Christ, after he had been baptized, did not partake of his own body. Nor let them so partake of it. (7) Christ, after he was baptized, fasted 40 days and only that; and for 120 years such was the tradition which prevailed in the Church. We, however, fast 50 days before Pascha. (8) Christ did not hand down to us the teaching to celebrate the mystery of the offering of bread in church, but in an ordinary house and sitting at a common table. So then let them not offer the sacrifice of bread in churches. (9) It was after supper, when his disciples were sated, that Christ gave them to eat of his own body. Therefore let them first eat meats and be sated, and then let them partake of the mysteries. (10) Christ, although he was crucified for us, yet did not command us to adore the cross, as the Gospel testifies. Let them therefore not adore the cross. (11) The cross was of wood. Let them therefore not adore a cross of gold or silver or bronze or stone. (12) Christ wore neither humeral nor amice nor maniple nor stole nor chasuble. Therefore let them not wear these garments. (13) Christ did not institute the prayers of the Uturgy or the Holy Epiphanies, and all the other prayers for every action and every hour. Let them therefore not repeat them, nor be hallowed by such prayers. (14) Christ did not lay hands on patriarchs and metropolitans and bishops and presbyters and deacons and monks, nor ordain their several prayers. Let them therefore not be ordained nor blessed with these prayers. (15) Christ did not enjoin the building of churches and the furnishing of holy tables, and their anointing with myrrh and hallowing with a myriad of prayers. Let them not do it either. (16) Christ did not fast on the fourth day of the week and on the Paraskevê. Let them not fast either. (17) Christ did not bid us pray towards the east. Neither shall they pray towards the east.

PAULINUS, SAINT, of (333–431). Pontius Meropius Anicius Paulinus, who was successively a consul, a monk and a